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Bat Hardin #2
The Towers of Utopia: Bat Hardin #2
Shyler-Deme is under siege! The enemy has no face. It does not show on the scanners. It avoids the world's most sophisticated surveillance system. But it leaves a wake of profitless crime and motiveless murder...and puts the future of mankind's paradise-on-Earth in peril!
208 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1975
About the author
Mack Reynolds
500 books43 followersDallas McCord "Mack" Reynolds was an American science fiction writer. His pen names included Clark Collins, Mark Mallory, Guy McCord, Dallas Ross and Maxine Reynolds. Many of his stories were published in "Galaxy Magazine" and "Worlds of If Magazine". He was quite popular in the 1960s, but most of his work subsequently went out of print.
He was an active supporter of the Socialist Labor Party; his father, Verne Reynolds, was twice the SLP's Presidential candidate, in 1928 and 1932. Many of MR's stories use SLP jargon such as 'Industrial Feudalism' and most deal with economic issues in some way
Many of Reynolds' stories took place in Utopian societies, and many of which fulfilled L. L. Zamenhof's dream of Esperanto used worldwide as a universal second language. His novels predicted much that has come to pass, including pocket computers and a world-wide computer network with information available at one's fingertips.
Many of his novels were written within the context of a highly mobile society in which few people maintained a fixed residence, leading to "mobile voting" laws which allowed someone living out of the equivalent of a motor home to vote when and where they chose.
He was an active supporter of the Socialist Labor Party; his father, Verne Reynolds, was twice the SLP's Presidential candidate, in 1928 and 1932. Many of MR's stories use SLP jargon such as 'Industrial Feudalism' and most deal with economic issues in some way
Many of Reynolds' stories took place in Utopian societies, and many of which fulfilled L. L. Zamenhof's dream of Esperanto used worldwide as a universal second language. His novels predicted much that has come to pass, including pocket computers and a world-wide computer network with information available at one's fingertips.
Many of his novels were written within the context of a highly mobile society in which few people maintained a fixed residence, leading to "mobile voting" laws which allowed someone living out of the equivalent of a motor home to vote when and where they chose.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 5, 2026
Set in the future world of 2000, as was so much of Reynolds' work, The Towers of Utopia is the second of his three books about Bat Hardin, following Commune 2000 AD, which also had "A Frederik Pohl Selection" above the title. This one has a rather trippy green Bruce Pennington cover that was recycled from a U.K. Brian Aldiss collection and then used again on the Ann & Jeff VanderMeer anthology, The Big Book of Science Fiction, not to mention a German edition of Edmond Hamilton's Star Kings and a 1974 issue of Science Fiction Monthly and an Italian edition of Thomas M. Disch's Mankind Under the Leash. Anyway, I liked this one a bit better than the earlier Reynolds book, which was filled with way too much silly sex and almost impenetrable slang. Those elements are still here, but they're not as overwhelming. It's an investigative story about organized crime engaged in running prostitution and drug dealing and all manner of nasty crime in a monolithic condominium. As always, Reynolds politics and economic theory and philosophy are at the forefront, but he tells an interesting story, too, this time.
October 2, 2021
Mack Reynolds was a prolific science fiction writer of the mid-twentieth century who is being rediscovered by modern futurists and with some reason - his ability to predict the world we live in now half a century ago is quite remarkable.
He is not, however, a great writer. 'The Towers of Utopia' feels like two novellas and a short story jammed together to serve his real purpose which is somewhat didactic - to explore the logic of American capitalism as it moves towards a self-realising 'welfare state'.
The story line and characterisations are amusing and the book acts as adequate light entertainment but what we really have here is non-fiction purporting to be fiction. This is intellectual socio-political scifi clothed in popular pulp memes.
This is not to denigrate it because it depends on what you are looking for. If you are looking for great and insightful literature adding to our understanding of the human soul, go read Dostoevsky. You won't get that here.
What you do get (from the vantage point of 1975) is the opportunity to question the America of your day according to its own logic. Reynolds scores some top marks for seeing not only how the system works but where it must logically lead.
This does not mean he gets it entirely right. As usual some of the technology is still a bit ahead of what we are capable of today (although becoming less so by the day) and we do not all live in hundred floor high rises while 'mobile towns' are rather an absurd concept.
The high rise 'demes' that provide the basis of the story represent a 'utopian' solution to mass poverty based on 'negative income tax' (what we would call now universal basic income) administered by managers answerable to good old and corrupting finance capital.
Class differences remain but crime has almost disappeared although at the cost of surveillance of all money transfers and movement outside the home (where the fig leaf of privacy remains sacrosanct unless of course the security forces think otherwise).
The similarities to our contemporary conditions are quite remarkable. Reynolds, who could have had no idea of an actual world centred on digitalisation and soon blockchain, imagines the consequences of such a world with more discipline even than William Gibson was to do later.
Perhaps this managerial capitalism with its coating of constitutional liberty but also with real power vested in organisations not unlike the modern Department of Homeland Security and in elected managers who belong to an avowed Meritocracy is more like China today in some respects.
If so, then the West is becoming more like China just as China is becoming more like the West with the only difference being that the Chinese have a Government that is still ultimately in control of Capital where the West does not - even if outcomes for us are potentially similar.
There is a sly critique of American capitalism's fear of Communism with the presence of a pseudo-socialist Futurist Party capable of overturning the system if not nipped in the bud. Reynolds is, in fact, highly skilled at not letting us into the secret of his own sympathies too easily.
This is cold, clinical, analytical stuff with a somewhat cynical view of human motivation as the 'good guys' (the managers) hold together a system that is far from as utopian as it initially appears and whose trajectory seems to be towards constant waste and eventual collapse.
There is a touch of Asimov and of his determinism with futures predictable by massively clever computers but also a hint that human nature can subvert the most utopian systems through bloody-minded refusal to get with the project or work-arounds to meet unmet desires.
Reynolds explores the workings of the mafia and of prostitution as well as the way the system controls drugs by providing something (shades of Huxley) that pacifies the poorest. Unemployment is, in fact, increasing as NIT grows in scale.
It is the insight into the risks of UBI that makes this book worth reading today. UBI is presented by idealists as the best means of dealing with inequity and poverty but our recent and decent experiment with furlough should cause us pause for thought.
Furlough was vital to get many vulnerable people through an existential crisis and there are arguments for continuing such benefits for those who can never work - perhaps a certain percentage of the population cannot but be near the bread line for many reasons.
Furlough also had one major positive short term effect that suggests that something like UBI might work for short one or two year periods in peoples' lives - it caused many people to re-evaluate their lives and look for new opportunities (the root of some of the labour disruption now happening).
Unfortunately, mass long term UBI looks as if it will have effects like those suggested in Reynolds' book - the creation of a bored and demoralised lumpenproletariat without any incentive to do anything with their lives except to vote in more benefits for themselves.
This is, as Reynolds points out, merely reproducing the conditions of Rome as it declined, with a senatorial class using its agents (the 'managers') to control the population through any means to hand - trank (the drug), surveillance, taking out dissidents, manipulative managerialism.
Ambition becomes defined in terms of becoming one of the managers, moving up the ranks in what amounts to an administrative army of economic legionaries, while the real wealth accumulates in massive amounts elsewhere based on networks that can support super-corporate needs.
Super-corporate profitability and survival (or rather the survival of its shareholders) becomes linked to welfarism but a welfarism that does not encourage responsible autonomy in the individual but just the atomisation of individuals who merely aggregate their desires to create markets.
The high rises, as much as in Ballard's 'High-Rise', brilliantly filmed by Ben Wheatley recently, contain the seeds of their own disintegration as market forces, corporate greed and corporate propensity for 'creative destruction' work their magic. Managers just move on.
Whether this is good or bad (Reynolds is good at not preaching at us, although equally good at creating opportunities for different points of view to do so) is not clear, perhaps it is the only way our savanna-origin species can operate - alphas, betas and gammas together.
His most subversive commentary lies in describing the situation in the first place and then suggesting that any such system (bearing in mind that the Soviet Union was an apparently successful entity at the time) can be overthrown if one subversive can get inbetween the cracks.
There are no answers in this book, possibly because there are no answers anywhere. It is poor literature (if that matters) but I can see why frustrated futurist engineers quite like it. It speaks to their doubts about the system they serve and heroises their class, the managers.
I suspect that, being engineers, they are not really tuned to Reynolds' sub-text which is that managers are part of the problem rather than part of the solution but my reasons for writing that must not be stated for fear of letting loose a spoiler.
February 14, 2025
One of the few books that I think should be made into a movie. There's things that would need tweaking, like re-naming Negative Income Tax to Universal Basic Income, but Reynold's Meritocracy is a plausible near-term future. Everyone lives in a massive city-state tower, called a deme, and nobody has to work. Fortunately, Reynolds tempers social commentary with a riveting mystery that really keeps the pages turning. Definitely recommend for those who like political science fiction though the term "Neo-hippie" still cracks me up.
August 25, 2024
review of
Mack Reynolds's The Towers of Utopia
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 23, 2024
I've read & reviewed many Mack Reynolds bks by now. For those of you who're interested in the company he's in in my 'Pantheon of the Godless' go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Reviewe... . One SF writer that I have a similar respect & appreciation for is John Brunner. I've reviewed a few bks by Brunner recently where I expressed surprise at the freshness of them in contrast to things I'd read by him before. Brunner wasn't a one-trick pony, he had a fertile imagination. Reynolds's variety isn't quite so pronounced but it's there. Many of his bks refer to "utopia" & then explore various dystopic possibilites. That's fairly common in SF but I think Reynolds explores this w/ deeper political knowledge than most & certainly w/ a thoroughness that displays his profound consideration of the subject.
This novel took me a bit off-guard b/c it focuses on the problems encountered by the management of a huge high-rise apartment building. This is quite different from, say, J.G. Ballard's Highrise, another author & bk I hold in high esteem, wch is a bit more spectacular. Reynolds's details are more subtle than Ballard's.
"Stevens said, "Look, Shyler-deme is a building with five thousand apartments. Given full occupancy, we have some twenty thousand tenants, give or take a few hundred. Okay. Every tenant, man, woman and child, has an I.D. which is indetified by our TV computer check. Outsiders to this building can come onto the ground floor and never be checked. But the moment anybody enters an elevator, he's checked through his TV pocket phone I.D. card, or, if it's a child, his electronic tag which he usually wears around his neck. Everybody. If he isn't an inhabitant of this deme, his phone buzzes and the computer check asks for his business."" - pp 5-6
This was copyrighted 1973. As w/ most SF it can be appraised in terms of its perspicacity in its predictions. I've always admired Reynolds's proto-cell-phones & projections of electronic security.
"Barry's pocket-phone buzzed and he brought it forth. He had it set for Priority Two, cutting off all calls except those of a very few persons." - p 22
"Barry said, "What'd the crook get this time?"
""The same as before. Nothing."
"The two other men looked at him questioningly.
"He said sourly, "In one apartment he ransacked the whole place but only lifted a small collection of coins."
""Coins?" Barry said.
""Money. You know, coins. Like they used before the Universal Credit Cards."
"Oh, of course. What was the collection worth?"
""So little as to be meaningless. In another apartment he took three books. Old books, printed on paper. Once again, practically valueless.["]" - p 7
Again, prescient predictions of an electronics-based society. One we're on the cusp of living in to a major degree - to our advantage & disadvantage.
A prominent oligarchy in the novel is the "Vanderfellers" family.
"Barry knew that the original Amis Vanderfeller had made his pile during the Civil War, a bit on the shady side, though not illegally. It seemed as though he had been sharp enough to scrape up a thousand dollars or so and to take an option on a warehouse full of condemned military rifles. When the conflict started, even condemned rifles were in demand and he unloaded them on a grateful Confederate government at an astronomical profit." - p 12
Given the similarity of "Vanderfellers" to "Vanderbilt" I decided to check whether the Vanderbilts supplied the Confderacy w/ weapons. A superficial online search doesn't establish that as probable. It seems that the weapons came from Great Britain.
Most people in the novel are living in these giant highrise apartment buildings. Moving from place-to-place is easy so the "demes" are in competition w/ each other.
""What else causes them to move?" Vanderfeller demanded.
""They like new buildings, with new gadgets, new improvements, or supposed improvements. I scanned some ads the other day. New demes have Tri-Di screens that occupy one whole wall of the apartment. The figures are projected life size. That's a big pull. Another new development is an auto-bar that has a list of two hundred drinks available.["]" - p 19
Sound familiar? Capitalism's endless 'upgrading'. Call me old-fashioned but I like an audio cassette duping deck that still works 20 yrs after purchase.
The idea of meritocracy is another recurring theme. What are the pros & cons of having people occupy positions that they've actually shown competence for instead of just being married to someone who cd put them there. Nepotism & Croneyism rule in Pittsburgh where I live. Chances are that if a person occupies a cushy position or a job they're not in the least bit qualified for it's b/c a relative or a friend got them there.
"Bat looked at his superior. "Great. Who is this character to keep us waiting out here? I don't know about you but I've got work to do."
"Barry said, "I've got work to do, too, Bat. This guy is the secretary of one of the members of the board of Vanderfellers and Moore, the cosmocorps we work for."
""Fine. But we don't work for Cyril Vanderfeller, member of the board or not. This is the day of Meritocracy. We work under central management of Vandefeller and Moore, under men who are holding down their positions because they proved their ability and right to hold them down. What the hell? This Cyril Vanderfeller might be an idiot and still be a member of the board. All you need for that is a big enough chunk of inherited stock."" - pp 64-65
""The thing to remember, Mr. Davis, is that Meritocracy didn't come into the world out of the blue. It's a continuation of what went on before, as every other new socio-economic system that ever came along has been. In spite of Negative Income Tax, a home guaranteed to each citizen, free medicine and all the other reforms of the past few decades, Meritocracy is no more than a continuation of capitalism, with a great deal of government control and planning The cosmocorps are still privately owned by a comparatively small number of persons. They make a great to-do about People's Capitalism and supposedly the stock of the cosmocorps is held by the people, but in actuality most Amerian families hold either none at all, or just a few shares. Control is still in the hands of the old rich families."" - p 122
One of the problems of the deme is a loss of occupancy.
""A deme can drop from full occupancy to half, or less, in a manner of weeks given riots, an onslaught of such types as weirds, subversives, escapists and prostitutes, bickering between top deme officials, and above all such deterioration of staff morals that all-out pilfering becomes the rule of the day."
"Barry Ten Eyck shook his head ruefully. "I'm doing the best that I can, and Mr. Hardin, here, is a good man. I'm sure he'll crack the thefts of the supplies down in the Restaurant and Liquor Divisions. The other matters are minor and will be handled as routine."
"The secretary leaned back in his chair and said soothingly, "Ten Eych, have you considered resigning?"" - p 70
Essentially, what's going on here are dirty tricks akin to those of Cointelpro.
""Yes. But I'll tell you where we do go. Back to ridiculous waste. A cosmocorps controlling a deme which can prove that the building is unsafe, substandard, antiquated due to new developments, or, for whatever other reason, no longer satisfactory, can petition the government to either completely renovate it, or tear it down and build a new one on the site. Needless to say, there is a lot of graft connected with this.["]" - p 82
Do you ever wonder about things like this? Where I've lived for the last 28+ yrs the closest supermarket was a Giant Eagle about a 15 minute walk away. It was the only store of its kind for a large area. It had a Rite Aid in its basement & a parking lot where jitney drivers offered cheap taxi fare for shoppers. There was legal street parking. Then the Giant Eagle was closed so there was no nearby food store for yrs. The Giant Eagle was torn down & a CVS was put in its place. The CVS replaced the Rite Aid but didn't provide anything other than minimal food. It had a parking lot w/ no jitney drivers. Street parking became illegal & the lot was for CVS customers only. In other words, the situation for people who lived around there got much worse. Why? Why was that 'necessary'? It wasn't. Not at all.
""He has evidently abandoned his pocket phone, Mr. Cotswold."
""Abandoned his pocket phone?" Ben Snider said in disbelief. "You can't get by these days without a pocket phone. How could be buy food, or a place to stay, or transportation, or anything else?"
"Roy Thomas looked at the Security Chief. "Admittedly, it isn't easy. We don't know completely how he has managed as well he has.["]" - p 110
It seems to me that many, or most, people take the systems that they float on for granted. Central to these are one's 'smart phone' & one's debit &/or credit card. What happens when those no longer work? I worked for 47 yrs & am now living off Social Security that's below the Poverty Line. It's not enuf. So I get what used to be called Food Stamps. These are electronically available thru a card. This mnth, my food stamps were hacked. According to an online search, roughly 2,400 food stamps recipients in PA had their stamps hacked in the 1st half of the yr. What if my SS were hacked too? I haven't been reimbursed for the food. In other words, every survival system that's reliant on something that one has no control over is a weak spot in one's security - & society is DESIGNED to be this way to keep people under control. Reynolds saw this coming from a mile away.
"["]If you know your American history, you are aware of the fact that the actual revolution of 1776 was precipitated by a single pamphlet, Tom Paine's Common Sense.["]" - p 128
SO, I finally got a copy of that & other work by Paine. If the above assertion is accurate that makes me wonder what cd be created today that wd have a similar impact & wd I want such a thing to exist? Publishing was still in an early phase in the late 18th century & a widespread pamphlet cd stand out. These days, a pamphlet mailed to every home might be able to capture some attn or it might just go straight to the trash as junk mail. A pamphlet strikes me as better than a TV spot b/c it can be owned & absorbed at the leisure of the reader. What about something that goes to the computer? That still strikes me as inferior to a physical pamphlet. Dick Turner tried something a little inspired by Paine here:
"Heretical Thoughts On The New Normal" pamphlet by Dick Turner And Fellow Heretics in February 27, 2022
- available on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Heretical-Thou...
- available on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/heretical...
- On YouTube as an audiobook here: https://youtu.be/IIiaUYsfs4Q
but Dick made no concerted effort for widespread distribution.
"Jim Cotswald said, with self-depreciation, "You see, I subscribe to the statement once made by S. G. Tallentrye, but which is usually attributed to Voltaire. I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.' " " - p 145
How many people feel that way anymore?! It seems to me that in this day & age a more common sentiment might be: 'i have no idea what you think but, according to the shallow malicious gossip of my friends you're obviously a horrible person & I'm working toward a society where you're absolutely crushed if you don't agree with me.' Am I being too cynical?! I've always been a supporter of agreeing to disagree - that, at least, nurtures healthy plurality. & who's this "S. G. Tallentrye"? It appears that that last name is misspelled & shd be "Tallentyre".
"Evelyn Beatrice Hall , who wrote under the pseudonym S.G. Tallentyre, was an English writer best known for her biography of Voltaire, The Life of Voltaire and a second volume The Friends of Voltaire, which she completed in 1906.
Hall created the phrase: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," (which is often misattributed to Voltaire himself), as an illustration of Voltaire's beliefs in The Friends of Voltaire. Hall's quote is often cited to describe the principle of freedom of speech." - https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Well, waddya know? That quote originated w/ one of them thar women critters I've heard so much about! She wrote The Life of Mirabeau. I'm too poor to snatch up anything by her at the moment but it looks like I'll have to add something by her to my read-before-I-croak list.
"["]Theoretically, you're supposed to take a job if one is available and you're on the Negative Income Tax, but in actuality there are a score of ways to get out of it. Or, if you finally do find yourself working, to get yourself fired so you can go back on NIT."" - p 156
This NIT idea isn't so bad but I propose something along the lines of RBB (Random Bankrupting of Billionaires) in wch billionaires have EVERYTHING taken from them wch is then given to me & I get a yr to distribute the wealth more equitably. After a yr, if I'm still a billionaire it all gets taken from me & given to a frog sanctuary.
I always find Reynolds's bio in these bks interesting & this one seems better than usual:
"Mack Reynolds has decided to concentrate on the year 2000 and for some time has attempted to write "realistic" science fiction dealing with the problems that will confront us at that time. So successful has he been that organizations such as EIDOS, the Theoretical Research "think tank" specializing on the world of tomorrow, has asked him to become a member. Realizing that books alone are inadequate for research, Mr. Reynolds in the 1950s began a campaign of seeking out material for his stories all over the world and, since, has lived in or traveled through more than seventy-five countries in every continent but Antarctica. A true adventurer, he once crossed the Sahara to Timbuktu and on the way was captured by the Tuareg (The Forgotten of Allah, and the so-called Apaches of the Sahara). Another time in the tropical jungles of Mexico he was bitten by a vampire bat and had to be treated for rabies. During his travels, Mack Reynolds has been in more than half a dozen wars, revolutions and military revolts, ranging from being shot at by the Huks in the Philippines to being bombed by anti-Castro Cubans." - p 202
Mack Reynolds's The Towers of Utopia
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 23, 2024
I've read & reviewed many Mack Reynolds bks by now. For those of you who're interested in the company he's in in my 'Pantheon of the Godless' go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Reviewe... . One SF writer that I have a similar respect & appreciation for is John Brunner. I've reviewed a few bks by Brunner recently where I expressed surprise at the freshness of them in contrast to things I'd read by him before. Brunner wasn't a one-trick pony, he had a fertile imagination. Reynolds's variety isn't quite so pronounced but it's there. Many of his bks refer to "utopia" & then explore various dystopic possibilites. That's fairly common in SF but I think Reynolds explores this w/ deeper political knowledge than most & certainly w/ a thoroughness that displays his profound consideration of the subject.
This novel took me a bit off-guard b/c it focuses on the problems encountered by the management of a huge high-rise apartment building. This is quite different from, say, J.G. Ballard's Highrise, another author & bk I hold in high esteem, wch is a bit more spectacular. Reynolds's details are more subtle than Ballard's.
"Stevens said, "Look, Shyler-deme is a building with five thousand apartments. Given full occupancy, we have some twenty thousand tenants, give or take a few hundred. Okay. Every tenant, man, woman and child, has an I.D. which is indetified by our TV computer check. Outsiders to this building can come onto the ground floor and never be checked. But the moment anybody enters an elevator, he's checked through his TV pocket phone I.D. card, or, if it's a child, his electronic tag which he usually wears around his neck. Everybody. If he isn't an inhabitant of this deme, his phone buzzes and the computer check asks for his business."" - pp 5-6
This was copyrighted 1973. As w/ most SF it can be appraised in terms of its perspicacity in its predictions. I've always admired Reynolds's proto-cell-phones & projections of electronic security.
"Barry's pocket-phone buzzed and he brought it forth. He had it set for Priority Two, cutting off all calls except those of a very few persons." - p 22
"Barry said, "What'd the crook get this time?"
""The same as before. Nothing."
"The two other men looked at him questioningly.
"He said sourly, "In one apartment he ransacked the whole place but only lifted a small collection of coins."
""Coins?" Barry said.
""Money. You know, coins. Like they used before the Universal Credit Cards."
"Oh, of course. What was the collection worth?"
""So little as to be meaningless. In another apartment he took three books. Old books, printed on paper. Once again, practically valueless.["]" - p 7
Again, prescient predictions of an electronics-based society. One we're on the cusp of living in to a major degree - to our advantage & disadvantage.
A prominent oligarchy in the novel is the "Vanderfellers" family.
"Barry knew that the original Amis Vanderfeller had made his pile during the Civil War, a bit on the shady side, though not illegally. It seemed as though he had been sharp enough to scrape up a thousand dollars or so and to take an option on a warehouse full of condemned military rifles. When the conflict started, even condemned rifles were in demand and he unloaded them on a grateful Confederate government at an astronomical profit." - p 12
Given the similarity of "Vanderfellers" to "Vanderbilt" I decided to check whether the Vanderbilts supplied the Confderacy w/ weapons. A superficial online search doesn't establish that as probable. It seems that the weapons came from Great Britain.
Most people in the novel are living in these giant highrise apartment buildings. Moving from place-to-place is easy so the "demes" are in competition w/ each other.
""What else causes them to move?" Vanderfeller demanded.
""They like new buildings, with new gadgets, new improvements, or supposed improvements. I scanned some ads the other day. New demes have Tri-Di screens that occupy one whole wall of the apartment. The figures are projected life size. That's a big pull. Another new development is an auto-bar that has a list of two hundred drinks available.["]" - p 19
Sound familiar? Capitalism's endless 'upgrading'. Call me old-fashioned but I like an audio cassette duping deck that still works 20 yrs after purchase.
The idea of meritocracy is another recurring theme. What are the pros & cons of having people occupy positions that they've actually shown competence for instead of just being married to someone who cd put them there. Nepotism & Croneyism rule in Pittsburgh where I live. Chances are that if a person occupies a cushy position or a job they're not in the least bit qualified for it's b/c a relative or a friend got them there.
"Bat looked at his superior. "Great. Who is this character to keep us waiting out here? I don't know about you but I've got work to do."
"Barry said, "I've got work to do, too, Bat. This guy is the secretary of one of the members of the board of Vanderfellers and Moore, the cosmocorps we work for."
""Fine. But we don't work for Cyril Vanderfeller, member of the board or not. This is the day of Meritocracy. We work under central management of Vandefeller and Moore, under men who are holding down their positions because they proved their ability and right to hold them down. What the hell? This Cyril Vanderfeller might be an idiot and still be a member of the board. All you need for that is a big enough chunk of inherited stock."" - pp 64-65
""The thing to remember, Mr. Davis, is that Meritocracy didn't come into the world out of the blue. It's a continuation of what went on before, as every other new socio-economic system that ever came along has been. In spite of Negative Income Tax, a home guaranteed to each citizen, free medicine and all the other reforms of the past few decades, Meritocracy is no more than a continuation of capitalism, with a great deal of government control and planning The cosmocorps are still privately owned by a comparatively small number of persons. They make a great to-do about People's Capitalism and supposedly the stock of the cosmocorps is held by the people, but in actuality most Amerian families hold either none at all, or just a few shares. Control is still in the hands of the old rich families."" - p 122
One of the problems of the deme is a loss of occupancy.
""A deme can drop from full occupancy to half, or less, in a manner of weeks given riots, an onslaught of such types as weirds, subversives, escapists and prostitutes, bickering between top deme officials, and above all such deterioration of staff morals that all-out pilfering becomes the rule of the day."
"Barry Ten Eyck shook his head ruefully. "I'm doing the best that I can, and Mr. Hardin, here, is a good man. I'm sure he'll crack the thefts of the supplies down in the Restaurant and Liquor Divisions. The other matters are minor and will be handled as routine."
"The secretary leaned back in his chair and said soothingly, "Ten Eych, have you considered resigning?"" - p 70
Essentially, what's going on here are dirty tricks akin to those of Cointelpro.
""Yes. But I'll tell you where we do go. Back to ridiculous waste. A cosmocorps controlling a deme which can prove that the building is unsafe, substandard, antiquated due to new developments, or, for whatever other reason, no longer satisfactory, can petition the government to either completely renovate it, or tear it down and build a new one on the site. Needless to say, there is a lot of graft connected with this.["]" - p 82
Do you ever wonder about things like this? Where I've lived for the last 28+ yrs the closest supermarket was a Giant Eagle about a 15 minute walk away. It was the only store of its kind for a large area. It had a Rite Aid in its basement & a parking lot where jitney drivers offered cheap taxi fare for shoppers. There was legal street parking. Then the Giant Eagle was closed so there was no nearby food store for yrs. The Giant Eagle was torn down & a CVS was put in its place. The CVS replaced the Rite Aid but didn't provide anything other than minimal food. It had a parking lot w/ no jitney drivers. Street parking became illegal & the lot was for CVS customers only. In other words, the situation for people who lived around there got much worse. Why? Why was that 'necessary'? It wasn't. Not at all.
""He has evidently abandoned his pocket phone, Mr. Cotswold."
""Abandoned his pocket phone?" Ben Snider said in disbelief. "You can't get by these days without a pocket phone. How could be buy food, or a place to stay, or transportation, or anything else?"
"Roy Thomas looked at the Security Chief. "Admittedly, it isn't easy. We don't know completely how he has managed as well he has.["]" - p 110
It seems to me that many, or most, people take the systems that they float on for granted. Central to these are one's 'smart phone' & one's debit &/or credit card. What happens when those no longer work? I worked for 47 yrs & am now living off Social Security that's below the Poverty Line. It's not enuf. So I get what used to be called Food Stamps. These are electronically available thru a card. This mnth, my food stamps were hacked. According to an online search, roughly 2,400 food stamps recipients in PA had their stamps hacked in the 1st half of the yr. What if my SS were hacked too? I haven't been reimbursed for the food. In other words, every survival system that's reliant on something that one has no control over is a weak spot in one's security - & society is DESIGNED to be this way to keep people under control. Reynolds saw this coming from a mile away.
"["]If you know your American history, you are aware of the fact that the actual revolution of 1776 was precipitated by a single pamphlet, Tom Paine's Common Sense.["]" - p 128
SO, I finally got a copy of that & other work by Paine. If the above assertion is accurate that makes me wonder what cd be created today that wd have a similar impact & wd I want such a thing to exist? Publishing was still in an early phase in the late 18th century & a widespread pamphlet cd stand out. These days, a pamphlet mailed to every home might be able to capture some attn or it might just go straight to the trash as junk mail. A pamphlet strikes me as better than a TV spot b/c it can be owned & absorbed at the leisure of the reader. What about something that goes to the computer? That still strikes me as inferior to a physical pamphlet. Dick Turner tried something a little inspired by Paine here:
"Heretical Thoughts On The New Normal" pamphlet by Dick Turner And Fellow Heretics in February 27, 2022
- available on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Heretical-Thou...
- available on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/heretical...
- On YouTube as an audiobook here: https://youtu.be/IIiaUYsfs4Q
but Dick made no concerted effort for widespread distribution.
"Jim Cotswald said, with self-depreciation, "You see, I subscribe to the statement once made by S. G. Tallentrye, but which is usually attributed to Voltaire. I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.' " " - p 145
How many people feel that way anymore?! It seems to me that in this day & age a more common sentiment might be: 'i have no idea what you think but, according to the shallow malicious gossip of my friends you're obviously a horrible person & I'm working toward a society where you're absolutely crushed if you don't agree with me.' Am I being too cynical?! I've always been a supporter of agreeing to disagree - that, at least, nurtures healthy plurality. & who's this "S. G. Tallentrye"? It appears that that last name is misspelled & shd be "Tallentyre".
"Evelyn Beatrice Hall , who wrote under the pseudonym S.G. Tallentyre, was an English writer best known for her biography of Voltaire, The Life of Voltaire and a second volume The Friends of Voltaire, which she completed in 1906.
Hall created the phrase: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," (which is often misattributed to Voltaire himself), as an illustration of Voltaire's beliefs in The Friends of Voltaire. Hall's quote is often cited to describe the principle of freedom of speech." - https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Well, waddya know? That quote originated w/ one of them thar women critters I've heard so much about! She wrote The Life of Mirabeau. I'm too poor to snatch up anything by her at the moment but it looks like I'll have to add something by her to my read-before-I-croak list.
"["]Theoretically, you're supposed to take a job if one is available and you're on the Negative Income Tax, but in actuality there are a score of ways to get out of it. Or, if you finally do find yourself working, to get yourself fired so you can go back on NIT."" - p 156
This NIT idea isn't so bad but I propose something along the lines of RBB (Random Bankrupting of Billionaires) in wch billionaires have EVERYTHING taken from them wch is then given to me & I get a yr to distribute the wealth more equitably. After a yr, if I'm still a billionaire it all gets taken from me & given to a frog sanctuary.
I always find Reynolds's bio in these bks interesting & this one seems better than usual:
"Mack Reynolds has decided to concentrate on the year 2000 and for some time has attempted to write "realistic" science fiction dealing with the problems that will confront us at that time. So successful has he been that organizations such as EIDOS, the Theoretical Research "think tank" specializing on the world of tomorrow, has asked him to become a member. Realizing that books alone are inadequate for research, Mr. Reynolds in the 1950s began a campaign of seeking out material for his stories all over the world and, since, has lived in or traveled through more than seventy-five countries in every continent but Antarctica. A true adventurer, he once crossed the Sahara to Timbuktu and on the way was captured by the Tuareg (The Forgotten of Allah, and the so-called Apaches of the Sahara). Another time in the tropical jungles of Mexico he was bitten by a vampire bat and had to be treated for rabies. During his travels, Mack Reynolds has been in more than half a dozen wars, revolutions and military revolts, ranging from being shot at by the Huks in the Philippines to being bombed by anti-Castro Cubans." - p 202
July 3, 2023
As with other books by this writer (or from science fiction generally), character development and plot take a backseat to exploring how society develops and what new technologies could exist. Even with this flaw, those ideas are interesting enough to make this book fun - for example, the book clearly predicts the internet and cell phones, plus some other things that did come to pass. While some might see the future described here as utopian, Reynolds makes it quite clear that the society that is ostensibly a humane “meritocracy”, by maintaining capitalism in a highly rationalized form, has most of the same problems of our own.
February 9, 2009
I love books that look WAY INTO THE FUTURE. You know... they year is 2000 and life is perfect, but something happens to mess with perfection. heh. Steady pace throughout. I was totally entertained!
May 22, 2012
Entertaining read even now - very dated though the underlying concepts still hold good
January 20, 2025
A bit better than Commune 2000 AD, a bit worse than Rolltown.
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